


Crystal Ball

by Anonymous



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers Infinity War Speculation, Flash Fic, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 09:11:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13995084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A look into the future, post-Infinity War. Pure speculation.





	Crystal Ball

She remembers the aftermath.

T’challa – tired, beaten, his helmet lost in the trampled grass, armor scratched and dinged, staring out desperately at the ruined battlefield for only a brief moment before standing and calling for the remaining soldiers to regroup. Okoye – lips tight, gathering what was left of the Dora Milaje around her. Captain Steve Rogers – face stoic and stern, leaning heavily onto James Barnes, who clutched at his flesh arm with a look of eerie blankness. The Hulk shrank to Bruce Banner. Natasha Romanoff helped him to his feet and escorted him to the Captain’s side.

Nakia arrived with news of an alien portal in the middle of New York City. But that was later.

Shuri made her way to her brother’s side. Her blasters were intact, but her war paint was smudged and her hair fell down around her face.

“We won,” she had said, young and naïve and hoping for any sense of closure. Bodies lay scattered around them.

T’challa made a good king, after the world was saved. Wakanda lent a helping hand to those devastated by Thanos, and they mourned for their dead together. She had never attended a funeral that large, though she would come close in the years to come.

Shuri continued her research, aided by Banner and Peter Parker, who made his way to Wakanda in his summers and let her study his biology. The Americans went home. Some didn’t. Some couldn’t. Life goes on, except when it doesn’t.

She opens her eyes, gasping scrambling to her feet. She had never thought – her father – her mother.

She takes deep breaths, her chest heaving as she desperately tries to take in air. She can feel hands on her shoulders, a voice telling her to “calm down, calm down” in a steady, slow voice she slowly starts to recognize as T’challa’s.

Shuri still feels the aftertaste of the herb on her tongue, licking her lips as she’s congratulated. T’challa smiles at her tiredly and winces intermittently, and she knows it’s best for him to go back to his room and rest.

She never asked to become the Black Panther, but with T’challa wounded as badly as he had been, with endless work for the Panther to be done, there had been no time to waste to bestow the power of the herb on her.

Shuri is no commander, no grand general leading her armies into battle, but she can do this – she builds. She helps, where she can. She protects. 

**Author's Note:**

> written in half an hour, after i read that shuri becomes the black panther at some point in the comics.


End file.
